Would the reading of the handbook still leave you with questions or inquiries in mind, feel free to join the Discord server and ask in the #q-and-a. You can as well reach out to the @HOSTS or @MODS.

Timeline

21 July	Announcement + Signups Open
30 Aug	Signups Close (including Home Map Choice)
2 Sep	1st Round Commences
9 Sep	2nd Round Commences
16 Seo	3rd Round Commences
23 Sep	4th Round Commences
30 Sep	5th Round Commences
7 Oct	Deciders Round Commences
14 Oct	Semi-Finals Commence
21 Oct	Grand Finals Commence

Registration

Before registration, players must have read the entirety of the handbook and joined the AoE Leagues Discord server. By signing up, you agree to the rules stated in the handbook.

You can sign up in the AOE Leagues by filling out the signup form. You will then receive the SEASON 11 PLAYER role on the Discord that gives you access to the #sign-up-changes channel, should you want to make changes to your signup. As this role is assigned manually, feel free to reach out to either hosts or mods should you not have it.

Home Map Selection

Upon signing up, you’ll be asked to choose a Home Map: it may be selected from any of the Standard DE Random Maps available in single player. Maps from recent S- and A-tier 1v1 tournaments will also be permissible. HyperRandom has been allowed. Other maps may be requested. These will be reviewed by the hosts and granted permission on a case by case basis. Choose well! You are going to play on it many times.

Smurfing isn’t allowed, and will be looked out for; as such, sign up with a link to your account with the highest Elo. Failure to comply with this rule might lead to a disqualification, or even ban.

All confirmed signups are posted in the confirmation spreadsheet.

Format

Seeding & Bracket

AOE Leagues players are split into divisions of 12 players, each division being further divided into 2 groups A and B, with 6 players each.

Registration ELO is taken to be the average between the current and highest Elo, and determines your division. It is preferred that players who haven’t played in the previous season have an active RM 1v1 Elo, however this is not 100% necessary. If you do not have an active Elo, the admins reserve the right to place you in a league that they see fit, with any available evidence of skill level.

Promotions: for runner-ups and champions of the previous season, their tournament Elo will be the maximum between the registration Elo and 50 + highest Elo of the previous division.

The exact division breakdown will depend on the number of signed-up players, and for that reason the highest and lowest ranked ones might be balanced differently. Results in the previous season might influence the seeding as well-the top 2 of a division could get promoted to the division above for instance. This decision, depending on the number of returning players, will be left up to the admin team, who will try their best to make it as fair as possible.

The tournament begins with an initial round-robin group stage, where each player plays against every other player in their group to gain points. This is then followed by a single-elimination final stage, in which the top two compete for promotion.

Group Stage

Maps

Play-All-2
The Host A is the player on the top row, Guest B is on the bottom row
Game 1 is on the A’s map (first column), Game 2 is on the B’s map (second column)

Civilisations

1 Civ Ban per map per player
Civs are banned for both players, but only for the corresponding map
Order of bans is: A1 B1 B2 A2 for players A (top row) and B with respective home maps 1 and 2
You may not repeat your civ in game 2 (you may use the opponent’s civ)
Example: if I ban Spanish for game 1 and Dravidians for game 2, my opponent can still pick Spanish in game 2

Points System

3 points for a 2-0 win
1 point for a 1-1 draw
0 points for a 0-2 loss

League Rankings

Points
Map wins
Head to head for equal players
Best of 3 decider

Playoffs

Using the rankings from the group stage, the players will be seeded with the top two going into the Promotion Playoffs.

Promotion Playoffs

The semi-final will consist of the first placed player in Group A facing the second placed player in Group B (A1 v B2). The other semi final will be B1 v A2. The winners will play each other in the Grand Final. The winner of the Grand Final will be crowned the Champion. Both finalists shall be promoted to the upper division for the next season.

Relegation Playoffs

This season will have no relegation playoffs.

Semi-Final

Best of 3
Host is the higher placed player in the league rankings
Map Draft using all 12 home maps from the division*
Civ Draft

Grand Final

Best of 5
Host is found using the following order A1 > B1 > B2 > A2
Map Draft using all 12 home maps from the division*
Civ Draft

Links to the map and civ drafts for every division will be provided after the tournament starts.

Promotion in the next season

As promotion system, finalists will benefit from a bumped up tournament Elo in the next season, calculated as the highest Elo in their division + 50, in case they don’t improve their ladder Elo above that quantity in the meantime.

* Dropouts: in case of one or multiple dropouts in a division, the corresponding home maps will still make it to the playoffs drafts.

Conduct

It is expected that all members of the discord follow the #rules of the server.

When interacting with players, mods and spectators, any abusive language, non-fit for work posts, calls to violence and bullying behavior will not be tolerated and these posts will be deleted and the offender banned from the server.

We also will treat any abuse or above negative behaviors on any other AOE server or stream to be considered grounds for banning from AOE LEAGUES.

Just be kind and supportive to one another.

Prize Pool

100€ will be spread among the 4 best players of division A - thanks to Koalollo, fnacho and rey200 for their generous contribution! If you’d like to participate in a prizepool, please DM one of the @MODS on Discord. We will update this section with further details regarding the total pool and the distribution closer to the start date of the tournament.

General Rules

Scheduling is left to the responsibility of the players, and games are to be played following the timeline as closely as possible. However, we understand that it can be difficult to schedule, so you may schedule and play sets ahead of time. If you know you are going to be unavailable for any of the weeks, you should discuss this with your opponents as early as possible. Also, contact a mod about any issues and alternate arrangements. Failure to arrange a game or no-show will forfeit the points for the one failing to arrange or failing to show; multiple no-shows might result in a disqualification. If something comes up and you can’t make it to a scheduled set, please communicate as early as possible and try to see if you can reschedule.

The admins have the right to make final decisions with regards to the rules and how they are applied, endeavoring to apply them as fairly as possible.

Stream Sniping and any other form of cheating are forbidden and result in a ban. This includes backseat gaming (getting help from any outside person, including a stream chat) and game breaking bug abuses (e.g. the tree hunting bug). Those should be declared by admin announcement on the Discord server; in any case, if you have any doubt on that matter, please ask.

In-Game Settings and Rules

Restarts and Restores

Restarts are allowed only if a map is bugged and should be called before “5 in-game minutes”. A map is considered bugged if resources are missing/inaccessible or at least half of their surface area is inaccessible. If you call a restart for a map that does not fit this criteria, this will result in a loss on that map.

In the event of a disconnect, a restore is preferred. If this is not possible, please reach out to @MODS for a decision. In the instance of a disconnect every effort must be made to save the game and restart from the saved point regardless of the time played. If there is no restore possible, the mods will likely recommend a restart if the game was close. All settings and civs must be repeated from the disconnected game. However, it is possible a winner will be chosen in situations where one player has a substantial lead (this will only occur if multiple mods are in agreement).

Cheating, Laming, and Map Settings

Cheating is forbidden and this includes bug exploits. Cheating will lead to disqualification.

Laming is not considered cheating but can result in a loss of the game for that map. See details below for specifics.

Laming, including villager fighting, walling in resources, and taking/killing opponent hunt or herdables, is forbidden before minute 4 in-game, except for the following maps:

Alpine, Black Forest, Cliffbound, Fractal, Hippopotamus, Le Grand Fosse, Socotra.
MegaRandom and HyperRandom type maps.
Nomad starts, however villager fighting is forbidden before 4 minutes. Walling in villagers is allowed.
If your home map falls into one of these categories, please remind your opponent at the beginning of the set.

For nomad starts, if initial town centers are placed such that they are capable of firing on each other, the game is to be restarted.
Town center drops (douching) is forbidden before minute 4, on any map.
Laming rules are in place to give players some time to check if a map has been generated correctly.
Any Regicide map will be played on the Regicide Mode. This includes, but is not limited to, Copenhagen and Regicide Fortress. Fortress can be chosen as a home map without Regicide (as this is the Ladder standard), but has to be specified when submitting, the default will be Regicide.
Black Forest will be played on the Explored Mode.

If you believe there are other maps that have specific rule changes, including visibility settings, contact the Hosts. The above points are subject to change once all home maps have been submitted and approved.

Civilisations

Mirroring is only allowed by accident, in other words you may not choose “Mirror” in the civ selection. You also may not choose “Random” or “Full Random”. In the event that Player A plays a game with a civ that they are not supposed to (either banned at the start, has already played with them once before during the set, or not drafted in a civ draft), then the match will be restarted and Player B picks what civ Player A plays as from Player A’s available civs, taking into account any civ draft or DLC Player A owns or does not own.

Lobby and Game Settings

Unless otherwise stated previously, all games will be played with these settings. The server chosen should be an agreed upon server based on local pings. If a suitably fair server cannot be decided upon, then servers will be alternated between games.

Again, for some maps the settings could vary, e.g. Reveal Map should be on Explored for Black Forest, or Fortress might be played with Regicide mode.

Fixtures and Results

AOE Leagues have transitioned away from using Battlefy and Tourney Bot to use automated Google sheets for the brackets. The standings, groups and sets (with host and guest) will be displayed in tabs, one per division. Every player from a division will be attributed the corresponding role on the discord server, which will give them access to the division chat.

Players are then responsible for getting in touch with their opponent and start scheduling.

Once the set is finished, the host of the set is responsible for uploading the recs and sending the results by filling the form of their division - the link will be available in #brackets-and-forms. The brackets and standings will then be updated automatically.

The recs should be uploaded in the forum replays under the post of the division, following the template pinned at the top - no spoilers!

If you make a mistake when sending the results please notify the @ MODS so that we can fix it.

In particular, if the results you just posted aren’t displaying, you might have put the wrong host/guest.

Schedule with your opponent by private message or in the division chat.
On the day of your set, arrive on time and notify your opponent that you are ready to commence.
Draft in the order specified in the Maps section.
Determine with your opponent the server to be played on.
The host should host the lobby and the first game is played on their home map.
Repeat on the guest's home map.
Report the results with the form.
Finally, one of the players will need to post the game recording files in the results channel. Tag each player and list their civ ban and upload both files. Rename the file to include player names and G1/G2. Follow the template in the channel.

Casting / Streaming Rules

AOE Leagues will have dedicated casters for each division. If you would like to be considered for being a dedicated caster, please contact the Hosts.

AOE Leagues allows open casting. Please assign yourself the caster role to gain access to the Caster’s Lounge Channels. This includes the graphical assets. It is recommended that you use the Logo with the Season Number, but you may use whichever logo works best on your screen.

You may also stream your POV as well. It is recommended you include a stream delay. Ensure that your chat is not giving you information or help regarding the game.

Changelog

Update timeline
Change the civ ban system for group stage
Update Prizepool section
Add logo
Specify dropout handling for playoffs
Add promotion system
Update Maps and Fixture and Results with the new sheets+forms based system